But at the same time, engaging with your followers can be time-consuming. If you are a solo social media manager or a small business owner, you know you don't have the whole day to engage with your followers.

So how can you minimize the time it takes to engage with your followers and still be authentic at the same time?

In this post, we'll share the tactics and tools we use at Buffer to engage with our amazing social media followers quickly and authentically.

5 creative types of replies you can use

If you have been replying to comments and mentions with a thank you, that's a great first step. But it can be easy to fall into the habit of using a few standard replies. I'm definitely guilty of that!

There are many ways you can spice up your replies, show your brand's personality and delight your followers. Here are some that I like:

It is also an efficient way to convey your tone and emotions in your replies. Unlike talking face-to-face or on the phone, it's not easy for your followers to pick up your tone and emotions in a text reply. But with a happy emoji, your followers would know instantly that you're smiling while replying.

I would recommend coming up with a few variations so that you aren't always replying with the same phrases. For example, instead of saying "Thanks for reading our blog post," you could also say the following:

Yay! Thanks for reading this! (GIF)

You rock for reading our blog post!

Thank you for checking it out! Will you be trying any of the tips mentioned?

Thanks! Have you tried any of the tactics before? It'll be great to hear how it went for you!

2. Have a handy list of GIFs, emojis and more

Besides searching for GIFs on Twitter and Facebook, I have a folder of my favorite GIFs for various types of replies. This way, I can grab and use them quickly without having to search. (There have been times when I was looking for a particular GIF and just couldn't find it through search).

Here are some of my favorites:

Aww, thank you:

You're welcome:

Awesome:

Excited:

You could download your favorite GIFs into an easily-accessible folder so that you can grab one quickly whenever you are replying to comments on your social media posts.

To download a GIF from GIPHY, click on "Download" on the right of the GIF and select the file type you want.

You could do the same for commonly-used screenshots and videos and also create a list of your favorite emoji in an Evernote note (or your preferred note-taking app) for quick access.

3. Use productivity tools

Using tools is another great way to help you reply your followers faster. Here are a few tools that we use:

Text Expander: Instantly insert snippets of text

With Text Expander, you can quickly type commonly-used phrases with just a few characters. For example, instead of typing "Thank you for sharing this post," you could type "tks1" and Text Expander would automatically expand it.

If you have come up with a list of replies according to tip 1 above, you could add them to this app. You can customize the abbreviation for each of your snippets.

5. Use automation to assist you

This is where a social media engagement tool can be super helpful. For example, we set up automation rules with Buffer Reply, such as the following, so that we can respond to social media conversations as quickly as possible.

Filter out spam and automated tweets and automatically close those conversations -- so that we can focus on those that require a reply

Move Facebook and Instagram comments into a separate folder -- so that Brian Peters, who manages our Facebook Page and Instagram account, can focus on them

Move tweets with our support hashtag, #BufferSupport, into a separate folder -- so that our Customer Advocates can reply to them as soon as possible

Automation tools like Zapier and IFTTT can also be useful here. The way they work is that an activity in an app will trigger another activity in another app. For example, if you want to reply as soon as someone mentions your brand on Twitter, you could use Zapier to send any Twitter mentions into your Slack.

How do you engage with your followers?

Engaging with your followers is a great way to build your brand. While the process can sometimes be time-consuming, there are tactics and tools that can help to minimize the time it takes for you to engage with your followers while staying authentic:

Craft your replies to common comments in advance

Have a handy list of GIFs, emojis, and more

Use productivity tools like TextExpander

Use a social media engagement tool

Use automation to assist you

Schedule time to engage

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